Wednesday Links: Please Stop Being Insensitive

In Philadelphia, in solidarity with the Ferguson protests, the young actor Keith Wallace staged a protest in front of Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” sculpture by lying face down on the ground with fake bullet holes through his back. White people took group photos and selfies. Others cropped Wallace out to get a shot of the sculpture. [artnet News]

If you want David Byrne’s opinions about the crisis faced by young struggling artists, in cartoon form, you can have that. Because fuck it, let’s trivialize everything. [Village Voice]

On Saturday, St. Louis groups call for solidarity actions for Mike Brown, for people to gather at a place in their community at the site of an unjustified police murder. The event map seems to be broken at the moment, so we’ll check back for updates later. [Action Network via @UPROSE]

A depressing statistic: In 2013 and 2012 the voter turnout rate in Ferguson was just 11.7 percent and 8.9 percent respectively. Generally speaking, when turnout rate is low, the electorate skews white and conservative. Their city government is almost entirely white, while two in three residents are black. [MSNBC]

Pedro Vélez continues his campaign against the white hegemony of the art press. To upgrade your bookshelf, he recommends Paco Barragán’s The Art Fair Age, an analysis of the contemporary art fairs. At $243, we can’t afford it. [Amazon via @PDRVelez]

Los Angeles County voters can choose whether to turn $23 million in annual property taxes to fund “parks and recreational facilities.” This includes money for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Natural History Museum, and the California African American Museum. [Los Angeles Times]

Arby’s (the only restaurant to willing to be followed by the phrase “We Have The Meats™”) will be getting a tax break. They’re donating Pharrell’s lumpy hat, which they purchased in March at a charity auction, to the Newseum’s permanent collection. [A.V. Club]

Researchers expose children to criticism at a young age and rank their drawings on a scale from 1 to 12 to see who is, and will be, the smartest. As it turns out, children who can draw better score higher on intelligence tests. [Time]

Public art trend? It’s not about you, it’s about the artist. Dan Colen, for a Washington, D.C. commission by the LAND, will install a boom box at a city underpass for three months, that will continuously loop a reading of Dan Colen’s future read by of various fortune tellers, thus “imbuing the dark, foreboding space with possibility, hope, and presence.” Good days ahead for Colen, we assume. Other projects look far more promising. [LAND]